Be Known to Us in Baking Bread
by fiologica
Summary: There's something comforting about creation, about having your hands in motion, about knowing that there's a tangible reward for your efforts. For Crowley, baking bread is one of those comforts, and a skill he has honed down many centuries.


It is a little known fact that Crowley has become, over the centuries and millennia, something of a master craftsman. He has tried nearly every art known to humanity, from crude clay figurines, to stonemasonry, to painting, and so much more. When you live long enough, after all, you do need to find something to fill your time with.

There's something comforting about creation, about having your hands in motion, about knowing that there's a tangible reward for your efforts. The other demons, of course, would never understand. Their lack of imagination has always appalled Crowley. Humanity, though? Humanity gets it. Humanity tells their story in stone and glass, in verdant greenery and channelled water, in the skills they hand down from generation to generation.

Some of those skills are life-sustaining. The chief among them is the making of bread. It's such an ancient art, passed through the centuries, tinkered with, improved upon. One of the most basic building blocks of the human culinary experience (the other being alcohol, brewed from whatever was on hand*.). It is also extremely satisfying to knead dough; to drop it from a height onto a floured surface, to fold it over and punch it down, to push it flat and then fold it over again and again.

Crowley likes to imagine all the faces he would dearly love to punch. All the demonic colleagues he would love to drop-kick. A certain Duke of Hell features in his thoughts often.

The process is therapeutic, for this reason.

The ingredients, too, are simple enough. Flour, water, salt, yeast. On the days when Crowley is bottling whatever homebrew he happens to be fermenting**, he skims the yeast from that***. Maybe a small dab of sugar to feed the yeast. Not too much.

Crowley has tried so many different recipes. He has tried the various pre-ferments. He has tried sourdough^. He has made fancy breads with eggs and milk and honey. He has braided challah. He has made unleavened bread. He has run the gamut of legume-based peasant breads, the finest white loaves, wholemeal and granary. He has tried different ways of baking the bread, from a simple iron pot over a fire, to communal ovens, to gas and electric ovens.

Most of the time, Crowley turns to the most simple recipe he knows. Flour, water, salt, yeast. It is not hard to turn it into dough, which is turned out onto a floured surface. The kneading, though, is the best part. The dough loosens, becomes stretchy. Every moment that the dough is under his hands, it goes from shaggy and sticky, to smooth and cohesive.

Dough isn't something you can terrify into doing your will, however: it needs to rest. There's always a prepared bowl waiting. He covers it with clingfilm. While the dough rests and rises, Crowley tidies the human way, with soap and warm water, with elbow-grease and rubber gloves. It's oddly pleasing.

An hour later, he punches down the dough and kneads again. The dough is pliant, taking every stretch, every fold, every turn. It is so so close to being ready - but it needs one more hour to rise. Crowley sets it aside in a prepared tin, and covers it with a kitchen towel.

Before the bread bakes, the oven is preheated. For the best results, a tray of warm water goes in the bottom. Crowley has tried the ice-cubes trick, but found it wasn't nearly as helpful.

With care, he slashes the top of the dough, a personal pattern that Crowley has used for centuries. In times when he relied on a communal oven, it was a way of identifying his loaf. According to what he has read^^, it also helps the bread to rise as it bakes. Who would have known?

Then, the bread is in the oven, and it's time for a break. Crowley never quite knows what to do with himself while he waits. Maybe he might call his Angel. Maybe he might lounge about on his throne. Maybe he might make some minor mischief. Maybe he might water the plants. Maybe he might terrorize them a little. Maybe he might sit and stare at the oven clock until the bread is ready.

When it is ready, Crowley turns the bread over in his hands and taps. A hollow thud confirms it. He smiles. Now it just needs to cool while the magic finishes.

"Angel!"

Despite the CLOSED sign, the door was always open anyway. Crowley sauntered on through. Instantly, he was met with the scents of cooking wafting from Aziraphale's kitchen. If he flicked his tongue, he could just about taste the air (although his Angel tended to disapprove of this habit, so he avoided doing it while in Aziraphale's presence.)

There were footsteps approaching. From force of habit, the response was the same as always.

"I'm afraid we're not- Oh, Crowley!"

Crowley smirked. Aziraphale could be so predictable. But then, he supposed, he would worry if that voice, that admonishment, were ever absent, if the only thing to greet him was silence.

"Brought you a little something," said Crowley, holding up a bag. Inside was the bread he had baked that day, and some bottles of homebrewed wine^*.

"Oh, Crowley," Aziraphale breathed, hands grazing against each other as he took the bag. There was something radiant about the angel as he smiled, gratitude etched into every line and plane of his face. "Thank you. You shouldn't have."

"I wanted to."

"Come on through," said Aziraphale warmly, gesturing for Crowley to follow after him. "Dinner's nearly ready."

Yes, a life like this, a life of blessed bliss. Shared and enjoyed, like good bread, like good wine, like good cooking. It was, in the end, absolutely worth anything. Autumn sunshine, warm and golden, flowed in through the windows, as if to bless the pair who had come to call each other 'home'.

**END.**

FOOTNOTES:

* Crowley is particularly fond of this building block, although he willingly admits that some brews have been better than others, and that there are a good number of others that are especially vile.

** Crowley has tried a lot of different ways of making alcohol. He does not talk about the pink grapefruit wine, nor the kitchen full of pink foam that made his flat reek for days

***Crowley has found that instant yeast can be just as good for bread, though.

^ He tried intimidating it into growing. Just to spite him, the sourdough escaped from its jar and spilled all over the kitchen surface.

^^ Isn't the internet fascinating for the wealth of information at your fingertips?

^* Not the ones he had bottled that day, though - no, those need to mature in the bottle first; these ones were bottles Crowley had prepared last month.


End file.
